What Love Does

Yesterday we looked at the portrait of love in 1 Corinthians 13.
Today Paul does something more demanding. He puts love under pressure.
He doesn't tell us what love feels like. He tells us what love does.

Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love rejoices with truth.
Love bears, believes, hopes and endures.
So let's ask the uncomfortable question:
What does my love do when I have every reason to do otherwise?

Let's say someone keeps irritating you. They disagree with you, make mistakes, and don't change as quickly as you'd like.
What does love do?

It is patient.

But patience has limits.

Of course. Love doesn't mean tolerating abuse or having no boundaries.
But here's the harder question:
How long does my love survive when someone refuses to become what I want them to be?

Paul also says love is kind.

That's easy when people are kind to you.
What happens when someone insults you? Criticizes your church? Leaves and then tells people why?

Exactly.
Love doesn't ask, “How badly can I respond and still call myself a Christian?”
It asks:
“How can I respond and still look like Christ?”

But what if I'm defending the truth?

Then here's the test:
What does the truth make you look like?
Can you disagree without despising?
Can you admit when you're wrong?
Can you rejoice when someone you disagree with turns out to be right?

That's difficult in church. Sometimes admitting you're wrong feels like surrendering.

But Paul says love rejoices with the truth.
Love is more committed to truth than to being right.

What about “love believes all things”? Are we supposed to believe everybody?

No. Love isn't gullibility.
But neither does love make suspicion its default setting.
How quickly we assign motives:
“They did that deliberately.”
“She's trying to undermine me.”
“He's only saying that because…”
Sometimes we know what happened.
But do we really know why it happened?
Love gives people the benefit of the doubt when there is room for it.

So love doesn't ignore wrongdoing?

No.
It simply refuses to convict someone based on a story we invented about them.

Now let's make this personal.
We know our doctrines.
We know the Sabbath.
We know the prophecies.
We know the health message.
We know the language of the remnant.
We serve, teach, preach and evangelize.
But what if we can possess all of that and still fail the test of love?

Are you saying religious knowledge can make us feel spiritually safe?

It can.
We can mistake belonging for becoming.
We can become so comfortable with what we believe that we stop asking what our believing is making us become.
I can defend doctrine and still be unkind.
I can keep the Sabbath and still make somebody's Sabbath miserable.
I can preach about grace and still refuse to give it.
I can call myself part of the remnant and still fail to resemble Jesus.

That's uncomfortable.

First Corinthians 13 is supposed to be.
It's not just a description of love.
It's a mirror.

Then how do we know whether the Spirit is really producing love in us?

Galatians 5 calls love fruit of the Spirit.
So perhaps don't ask only:
“Do I have the Spirit?”

Ask:
What is the Spirit producing in me?
When I'm offended, what comes out?
When I'm challenged, what comes out?
When someone disagrees with me, what comes out?
When someone fails, what comes out?
When someone succeeds ahead of me, what comes out?
When someone I dislike needs my help, what comes out?
Because pressure doesn't create our character.
It reveals it.

So maybe the question isn't whether I know what love is.

Exactly.
The question is whether people can experience it when they encounter me.
Because I can have the truth.
I can have the doctrine.
I can have the Sabbath.
I can have religious experience.
And still miss the one thing Paul says gives everything else meaning.
Love.

The real test of love isn't how beautifully we can describe it.
The real test is what we do when we have every reason to do otherwise.